Guests tour Vale’s social care and health success stories

Published 01 April 2015

Staff and service users welcomed Chief Medical Officer Dr Ruth Hussey to Penarth, and Deputy Health Minister Vaughan Gething AM to Barry on 31 March to take a tour of two successful health and social care projects in the Vale.

Dr Hussey visited Redlands House, a sheltered accommodation unit in Penarth, and was able to see first-hand how Welsh Government funding has been used to greatly improve services.

Redlands House has been reconfigured to provide a safer environment and improved facilities, including two rehabilitation units that act as a ‘step down’ service which aims to assist individuals in regaining independence as quickly as possible. Older people are able to use the units while housing adaptations are being carried out in their own home.

The remodelling of the Council’s integrated health and social care Customer Contact Centre in Barry has seen it achieve radical reductions in waiting times for Adult social care services in the Vale. In 2013, the contact centre took responsibility for the out of hours GP service for the Vale and Cardiff. During the last twelve months, it has accelerated rapidly to become the single point of contact for many of the people making enquires about health and social care services, with many benefits in terms of quicker response times and more joined up services.

Phil Evans, Director of Social Services, said: “The triage work undertaken by the contact centre ensures that callers are directed to the right service first time, whether it’s provided by the health service, the Vale Council, or the voluntary sector or all three working together.”

“By providing a single point of contact for the people of the Vale, we have not only made our services easier to access but also significantly reduced response times for social care assessments. At the same time, we have been making big improvements in our ability to provide joined up community health and social services that offer better reablement opportunities for people and good quality longer-term care.”